'TIS THE SEASON TO BE JOLLY

A cumulus cloud of cigar smoke drifted over the Waldorf-Astoria's grand ballroom as the heroes of bygone Saturdays settled back to listen to the speeches and entertainment. The occasion was the National Football Foundation's annual banquet, and the first man on his feet was Bob Hope. He was in top form, and when he sat down again, Hope left the old footballers weak with laughter. "Things have changed," he said. "I took a cab from the hotel to come here, and Carmine De Sapio was driving it." Then he turned to the young collegian award winners and barked out a command: "Students out there, stand by! You could be in the next Cabinet! If you'd come from Harvard, you'd be in tomorrow!" With a bow to the honor guest at the head table, the "quarterback of the Hyannisport All-Stars," Hope quipped: "Listen, touch football is not a sissy sport. Up there in Hyannisport, roughing the passer is a federal rap." Finally he had some news of a fellow Californian: "Nixon couldn't be here--he's running for Governor. He'll campaign on radio."

To follow Hope's boffola performance would be difficult for any man, but the President of the U.S. rose manfully to the occasion--and delighted his audience. "Politics is an astonishing profession," he said gravely. "It has permitted me to go from being an obscure lieutenant serving under General MacArthur to Commander in Chief in fourteen years without any technical competence whatsoever. It has also enabled me to go from being an obscure member of the junior varsity at Harvard to being an honorary member of the Football Hall of Fame."

Expanding on his theme, Kennedy noted that there were some similarities between football and politics. "Some Republicans have been unkind enough to suggest that my election . . . was similar to the Notre Dame-Syracuse game [which Notre Dame won, 17-15, on the basis of a referee's disputed ruling]. But I'm like Notre Dame. We just take it as it comes along. We're not giving it back."

Later in his speech-laden week, the President gave his audiences some more touches of humor. At a luncheon for the conservative National Association of Manufacturers, he wryly noted that "in the last campaign most of the members of this luncheon group today supported my opponent--except for a very few who were under the impression that I was my father's son." And he reiterated his theme: "I'm not sure you have all approached the New Frontier with the greatest possible enthusiasm, and I was, therefore, somewhat nervous about accepting this invitation until I did some studying of history . . . I learned that this organization had once denounced our 'swollen bureaucracy' as among the triumphs of Karl Marx, and decried, on another occasion, new governmental 'paternalism and socialism.' I was comforted when reading this very familiar language to note that I was in very good company. For the first attack I quoted was on Calvin Coolidge and the second on Herbert Hoover."

In Florida the next day, the Kennedy jokes flowed on. "For all I have been reading for the last three, four or five months about the great conservative revival that is sweeping the U.S.," he told an exuberant meeting of Young Democrats in Miami, "I thought that perhaps no one was going to show up. Artemus Ward once said, about 50 years ago, 'I am not a politician and my other habits are good also.' " Arriving in Bal Harbour, Fla., for the annual convention of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., he greeted Big Labor's leaders with a casual weather report: "It's warmer here than it was yesterday."

But then, as all politicians and comedians occasionally do, the President laid an egg. In his speech to the unionists, he cast Labor Secretary Arthur Goldberg in the leading role of a joke that he had been clinkering around for at least six months. Goldberg, he said, had been lost on a mountain-climbing expedition in Switzerland. "They sent out search parties and there was no sign that afternoon or night. The next day the Red Cross went out and around, calling 'Goldberg--Goldberg--it's the Red Cross.' Then this voice came down the mountain: 'I gave at the office.' "

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